The coming 2020 census will confirm a trend demographers have been tracking for decades: By 2040, half the U.S. population will live in only 8 states. The next 20 percent of the population will live in 8 other states. The remaining 30 percent of the population will be scattered around 34 states.
The U.S. Senate today is highly undemocratic and strikingly unrepresentative. The 39,600,000 people in California are represented by only 2 senators in the senate. The 579,000 people in Wyoming are represented by the same number of senators. Voters in large states — California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania — are vastly under-represented in the Senate. Voters in the small states — Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota — are grossly over-represented. 71 percent of U.S. senators are (mostly affluent) white men. White men are less than 30 percent of the U.S. population. And affluent white men are less than 10 percent of the country.
Democrats have won more votes in each of the last three senate elections, yet Republicans have a majority in the senate. The Republican coalition of rural whites, exurban whites, and anti-tax suburbanites is not large enough to win a national popular vote, but, because it covers most U.S. states, it has a powerful advantage in the senate — where each state, no matter how large or small, has 2 senators. The system created by the framers of our constitution incorporates a bias toward geography and away from people. That bias will soon become even more extreme — and permanent.
In 2040, the 50 percent of the population living in 8 states will have only 16 senators representing them. The next 20 percent of the country living in 8 other states will have the same number of senators — 16 — representing them. The remaining 30 percent of the population — overwhelmingly white, rural, and Republican — will control the senate with 68 senators — a super-majority large enough to override any presidential veto.
As the country grows more urban and more diverse during the next 20 years, representation and power in government will grow less reflective of the country. A largely diverse, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic country will be controlled by a rural, white minority of 30 percent.
The correct response to this development is to call out the illegitimacy of the system under which we now live, and change it. Will the white, conservative Republican base that controls the national government — and whose control will only strengthen — voluntarily surrender that power? Ha.
